CFP: Forgetting the Body in the American West (6/10/05; WLA, 10/19/05-10/23/05)

I am seeking papers for a proposed panel for the upcoming Western
Literature Association confence to be held in Los Angeles October 19-23,
2005. In keeping with the conference theme, "Cultures of Memory and
Forgetting in the American West," this panel seeks to interrogate
various forms of forgetting and memory in relation to the body, and,
more specifically, the Western American (or West Coast) body.

Particular interests include:

  a.. How is the body 'forgotten' via our current culture of cosmetic
surgery and body modification? How do literature/film/performance
narratives interrogate, subvert, or negotiate such 'surgical
forgetting'?
  b.. How does the popularity of the 'reality tv body' mitigate against
or help us to 'forget' the very real bodies and corporeal limitations
that shape life in the West?
  c.. How does contemporary fiction negotiate, subvert, suggest modes of
embodiment, corporeality, and bodily re-membering?
  d.. In what ways do various popular bodily practices (tattooing,
piercing, weight lifting, surgical alteration, etc) forget and/or
remember the body in politically valuable (and or destructive) ways?
  e.. How is the forgetting of the body - its pains, its pleasures, its
flesh, its desires, etc - harnessed for political, religious, artistic
means, and to what effect?
  f.. How does technology in its many guises impact on the notion of the
forgotten body? How do our daily negotions with internet technology,
cell phones, video games etc promote a forgetting of corporeality?
  g.. Do bodies in and of the American West suffer/gain from a
particular type of forgetting that is unique to California, Hollywood,
etc?
  h.. How are minority/immigrant/fat/disabled bodies forgotten in the
American West? What are the historical, political, geographical
parameters that have shaped this forgetting?

If you are interested in presenting a twenty minute paper for this
panel, please send a one paragraph abstract, paper title, and contact
information to nkwc_at_cox.net by June 10.

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Received on Tue May 24 2005 - 11:58:58 EDT